The Apocalypse Reader by Justin Taylor (Editor) Page A

down like you can push down the nose on your face-and then he takes his piece with his hands and I watch the last piece of cake to see if it'll spring back up but it doesn't, its just squished on one side like someone stepped on it.
    But here's what I don't understand, is how all through it she's just chatting with the dinner guests and it's like he's done nothing at all. She's not looking at him like, "You squished the cake!" and she's not looking at him like, "He loves the cake so much he couldn't help himself," and he doesn't seem to be thinking, "Only I can squish the cake!" Or is he?
    I never know how to read people.
    But here's what else: watching the round cake disappear, watching the people trying to make the most of their pieces, people coveting the cake on one hand and reminding themselves on the other that this will not be the last cake. But will it be the last? I look at their love and I feel like this could be the very last piece of it on earth, and just look at it.
    FEELINGS
    I SMOOTHED THE described sheet over the described person I'd loved before the apocalypse. The rich feelings welled from the page emotionally. Under the blanket, the person I loved remained. We used to mean so much.
    THREAT
    FOR YEARS, A telephone pole leaned, a low fear at the back of the neighborhood. That evening he went home and poured several very even trays of ice cubes. I was dressed for the apocalypse. I was depressed for the apocalypse. I carried a bundle of dust like a nest. My heart beat in its fleshy pocket. Worms had tried to make it across our porch over night and now they lay like something shredded, like shredded bark, but deader. My brother, looking ashen, kept waiting for the telephone. I missed out on all the gossip. An iris wilted into a claw. A rowboat rocked in our vast yard. New birds gathered like, I don't know, a lack of entropy?
    DOLL
    Now SHE STEPS into the street of her town that has been cleaned by a supernatural oven. The chemical stench is left. The sky is a soft green. Behind the haze the sun hums, fuzzed like a moldy fruit. She is not quite sure where her limbs are in relation to her body. Something has happened to the air and given it a texture of fog. It is either hard to see through or her eyes are changed or there is a funny color or blur to everything and she has objects mixed up with the air. Across the street is the bank, with its mirrored exterior, and there's something on the sidewalk in front of it. What is the logic of this apocalypse? What is eradicated and what is left or half-left, zombie-like, behind? Is what's left behind a code?
    Zombies are codes. They are codes of warning. They are the form of our preapocalyptic foolishness; our sort-of-dumb-sort-of-evil existence that led to this, which is our fault even if it turns out the final threat was the one from outer space.
    What she finds on the sidewalk will help us know. As she approaches the object she discovers that it could be one of two things: it could be a doll, or it could be a baby. If this is a doll, she thinks, then this is a sentimental apocalypse.
    She can see herself kneeling at the doll, touching its cold fingers, raising her eyes as if she is being witnessed, meeting her own eyes in the mirrored bank wall. This could make the television right after all.
    Luckily, when she arrives, it's not, and when she touches its fingers the fingers are like rubber. Then when she raises her eyes she is startled to find she sees eyes that are not her own; they are the eyes of a ghost who is standing in the street behind her. When she turns she cannot see the ghost, but back in the mirror, there the ghost is. The ghost doesn't really look at her. The ghost only sort of has eyes. The ghost is a little bit clothed, a little cloaked. The ghost is hard to see. It's heavier than vapor; more held together than dust, more specifically formed than constellation, and it seems, she decides, to be a male ghost. She gazes across the baby at the ghost. Jesus,